GuitarTricks review

Because of all of the media hype around e-learning these days and after reading this GuitarTricks review, we decided to conduct a review of GuitarTricks, an online guitar instruction site. We just wanted to see if a beginner would be able to learn to play the guitar online, as well as what a more advanced guitarist could learn.

Disclosure: The reviews written on this site are carried out by professionals, who receive compensation from the companies whose products get reviewed. We test each product thoroughly and recommend only what we believe to be the very best. We are independently owned and the opinions expressed here are our own.

The site gives video guitar lessons for the rather inexpensive cost of $10.75 per month (using annual membership), which is really not much considering that a private guitar teacher costs about $30-$40 by the hour. In fact, it really is safe to say that GuitarTricks is better than a personal tutor.

They have over 11,000 video guitar lessons addressing just about all types of music, and in every difficulty level. Imagine what it would cost you to get that many lessons from a personal guitar teacher 🙂 Check out our video review, than read all about GuitarTricks below.

GuitarTricks for beginners, a.k.a. the Core Learning System

GuitarTricks created a so-called "Core Learning System", which is their set of lessons aimed at newbie guitarists. It's actually a full-fledged beginner guitar course, which can take a newbie to an early intermediate stage.

This is how it works:

Everyone starts on the very left at Guitar Fundamentals 1, and continues to Fundamentals 2. These 2 mini courses teach the basics everyone needs to know.

Once you have mastered the Fundamental lesson sets, you can continue learning the specifics of blues, country, or rock. Or all of them if you wish 🙂

All the video lessons have on screen notation, and supplemental tabs to download.

GuitarTricks for experienced guitarists

If you've been playing a few years and are past the basics, you'll be able to advance your knowledge and skills with a barrage of lessons, covering everything from tone, different genres, etc.

If you’re an advanced guitarist and want to take things to the next level, you’ll really like the “Artist Studies” section of GuitarTricks, which is a major part of the site focused on looking at and mastering how the most famous guitarists played, and also the things they do to be able to make their songs sound the way they did. This is a fantastic element we found in the course of our assessment of GuitarTricks, due to the fact that even more advanced guitar students will get years worth of videos.

Styles covered at GuitarTricks

Beside the blues, country, rock beginner courses in the Core Learning System, GuitarTricks has thousands of videos covering other genres as well. Here is a list of the specific genres you'll be able to learn on their site.

Know that some genres have a bunch of lessons, and some only a few. For example, surf and world have very few lessons, while the bigger categories have hundreds each.

Song lessons gazillion

Unquestionably the best part of playing guitar is being able to play songs that you love. GuitarTricks has a huge catalog of song lessons, over 500 songs at the moment, which is twice as many as the closest competition. We have many song tutorials as well, but not nearly this much.

Online guitar tools

Online guitar tuner: this is a reference tuner, so it doesn't pick up the sound of your guitar.

Interactive scale and chord finders: which are useful and look nice.

Metronome: which is always useful.

Fretboard training game: which will help you memorize the notes on the fretboard in a more enjoyable way.

Jam station: which is a huge collection of jam tracks.

Other than the Jam station, all the tools can be downloaded onto your PC. Here are a few images of the online tools:

These tools can be of great help when learning guitar, however, I still tend to use the tools built into the Guitar Pro software instead of any online tool.

Real screenshots

Here are some real screenshots a logged in customer would see on the site.

Our opinion after reviewing GuitarTricks.com

GuitarTricks is definitely a high quality site, which has lessons for all levels of guitar players. The volume of lessons they have on their site is gigantic, and they add more regularly.

What we definitely liked about GuitarTricks:

Good search and site structure, so that you can easily browse the 1000's of instructional videos.

Videos are downloadable (except the song lessons), which we did not find while reviewing any other guitar learning site.

Affordable pricing compared to the quantity of courses on the site. Getting this many lessons from a private guitar teacher would cost a great deal of money, yet only $15 a month at GuitarTricks.

Videos have a 3-angle view shot on HD cameras, so you always see what's going on in high-definition.

60 day money back guarantee, so if you sign up but change your mind/don't have time/break your guitar, etc., you can just ask for a refund.

However, there are a few negative things we noticed at GuitarTricks during our review:

Since GuitarTricks was the first video guitar instruction site on the web, about 2% of the video clips are old, thereby of reduced quality. They are actively working on replacing the older videos though, so they won't be there for long.

Here is a sample video of a GuitarTricks.com lesson:

GuitarTricks is quite popular among beginner guitar players nowadays, have a look at what other people are saying about the site.

Also, you might want to have a look at JamPlay as well, they are the biggest competitor of GuitarTricks. And if you are still having trouble deciding between the 2 sites, this comparison of JamPlay vs. GuitarTricks should help you out.

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About us

TheGuitarLesson.com, created by Tom Fontana, is dedicated to bringing the highest quality guitar tutorials to beginner guitarists. Through creating fun and engaging guitar lessons, we aim to spread our love of the guitar to as many new players as possible.